AI and Art III: The Work

While it certainly makes sense to consider
the qualities of the creator when determining whether a work is art, it also
makes sense to consider only the qualities of the work itself. On this
approach, what makes a work art are these qualities. Naturally, it also makes
sense to consider the effect of this qualities on the audience as a key part of
sorting out art. For example, David Hume’s somewhat
confusing theory of beauty seems to make beauty a matter of how the
qualities of an object affect the audience. Other thinkers, such as Plato, take
the quality of beauty to be an objective feature of reality. Defining art in
terms of objective beauty would seem to entail that the qualities of the work
determine whether it is art. Since one could go on almost forever considering various
qualities, it is fortunate this essay does not require a theory of what
qualities of a work make it art. All I need is the hypothesis, for the sake of
the discussion to follow, that something being art is a. . .
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